Beware of Dogs Read online

  I left the two bushes outside while I settled my belongings in my shelter, then pulled them across the entrance to form a hide, so that I could see out but no-one would be able to see in. Then I waited.

  As a special treat and to relieve both the nervousness and the monotony, I allowed myself to eat my snack half an hour early. Perhaps it was the effect of hunger, but the boobialla fruits were a pleasant surprise. They didn’t look promising. Pea-sized and an alarming dark purple, they had a worrying resemblance to deadly nightshade berries. I bit into the first one tentatively, and found it tasted like a rather sour and salty plum. As I ate one, then another, the taste grew on me and I enjoyed the aftertaste for some minutes.

  I dropped the large central seed-cases into a specimen bag and planned to scatter them when I next collected some fruits. That way I wasn’t being a complete environmental vandal by preventing the seeds from germinating. Whether the birds that would normally eat and distribute them would be interested in such thoroughly chewed pits was another matter, but at least I could try to do the right thing. Although what the right thing is does become much less clear-cut when it’s a matter of your own survival.

  Then all thoughts of food were forgotten. First, the sound of an engine, then the boat, with the unmistakable Mick Duffy at the helm, hove into view. Of Kel there was no sign, which was strange. It had seemed like a two-person boat at least. I didn’t know how long they would stop, but I thought I heard voices about twenty minutes later, and soon after that the boat appeared again, heading for the mainland. I craned to see who was on it. A mist had come up over the sea and the figures were no longer recognisable, but I counted three males and recognised Lana by her bright hair that no mist could disguise. My heart thumped with incredulous relief. It seemed I was wrong, and both Dave and Matt had left as they had planned.

  I was alone on the island. I still had to find some way of safely attracting attention, but at least no-one was coming after me.

  I found myself shaking and unable to move, so great was my surprise. I drank my water ration and scrambled out of the shelter, not bothering to brush away my traces. But somehow I couldn’t believe it without checking. I climbed up the ridge to try to find a vantage point from which to see the cabin. Just to be sure.

  Eventually finding a gap in the scrub, I peered through and saw . . . nothing. The cabin was closed up, the barbecue covered, and the fishing rods were gone. But I still couldn’t bring myself to go down there, and anyway I needed to return to the cave to get the rest of my stuff. Still, superstitiously, I kept on covering my tracks this close to enemy territory, even though I felt assured that the enemy had gone, at least for now.

  I will stay in the cave for tonight. Just knowing I’m not confined here any more makes me feel quite sentimental towards my shelter, and despite its many discomforts I am almost reluctant to leave it.

  Sunset: Second toilet run. Prepare for sleep. Finish diary.

  This could be my second last toilet run. I take the opportunity to sit on the headland, writing my diary, breathing in the sea air, remembering how Jonathan used to call it ‘ozone’, and that I would always remind him that ozone actually smells more like chlorine. The feeling as I sit here is almost anticlimactic, as I realise I may be leaving my cave for good. I decide that tomorrow morning, before I go anywhere, I will venture down that rock stairway and explore the little beach.

  It’s almost completely dark by the time I’m settled for the night, and I have to use the torch to write the final entry in my diary at 5.56 p.m. on Monday the 16th of April.

  * * *

  I’m so stirred up I can’t sleep, my brain whirring like a windmill in a hurricane.

  To calm myself down I begin to make plans for my new, if limited, freedom. Basically I’m exchanging cave confinement for island confinement, but there’s no question about which is preferable, so I’m nervous but excited. If I can get into the cabin, I’ll have no more food problems, and even if not, I’ll have plenty of water, and can cook bush food on the outside fireplace, making survival certain instead of, as it seemed until recently, coming to its time limit.

  I’ll stick to my plan to go down the rock staircase, partly out of curiosity, because I’ve been so longing to do it, and partly out of caution. If I can’t get into the cabin, and I have to see that as a possibility, I’ll need to exploit all available sources of food. For the same reason I’ll stick to rationing my supplies until I’m sure of replacements, but I won’t need to follow my timetable, and can stay out all morning if I want and explore this whole area, since I may not need to come back here again.

  I should be at the cabin by lunchtime and if all goes well, I may be able to have a proper meal to celebrate. Fantasies of wood-fired stews of shellfish and karkalla leaves finally let me drift off . . .

  Dreams. About rock-climbing with Jonathan and Lana. Jonathan is obsessed with the idea that I want to climb with Lana more than with him. He’s dangling on a rope, threatening to cut it, saying, ‘Choose. It’s me or her.’

  Which is strange because Lana is about the last person I’d expect to see at the end of a rope. Certainly I didn’t ever see her doing anything remotely sporty. She can’t even swim. The person I first went climbing with was Jonathan, and all my early Australian climbs were with him and his friends so that makes sense, but why does he still appear in my dreams? I don’t like the way dreams are forcing me into introspection. I never used to dream like this. In fact I hardly remember dreaming at all. Now each night I seem to be dragging myself back into the past. I suspect this is what counsellors make you do, which is why I’ve always resisted the idea of seeing one.

  Kathryn believes I have a fear of commitment and she’s always having a go at me to see a counsellor so that I can be cured and go out on ‘dates’ with her. She thinks I haven’t got over Jonathan dumping me and that I go rock-climbing in all my spare moments to avoid having to build up a social life of my own.

  I suspect that she’s right in many ways about this. I also suspect it isn’t quite as simple as that, but I have to admit I haven’t thought about it all that much. My work is so demanding that in my spare time I like to get away, in company but without intimacy, to drink in the beautiful Australian outdoors and feel the texture of rock under my fingers. It’s hard to explain to a non-climber just how much pleasure there can be in rocks, both in enjoying the variety, the colours, the responses to your touch, and in conquering a difficult and challenging climb.

  In fact it was rock-climbing that brought Jonathan and me together. After my pathetic reaction to my brother’s visit, I was determined to find some kind of social life at university. I couldn’t be sure that this would come from other students in the science faculty, who would probably mostly be male. And English. I’d had almost no contact with English men, so I decided to broaden the possibilities by joining a club. After a careful survey of what was on offer during orientation week, the number of contenders dropped quickly. The Young Conservatives Club, the many Christian societies, GROW (‘find your inner self by reaching out to others’) and Women Who Want to be Women were early casualties, followed by other religious and political groups.

  The final choice was out of four: the university’s branch of the Pennines Rock-climbing Association, the Chocolate Appreciation Society, an international students’ club or a hiking club.

  I recognised a girl from Lambton School at the hiking-club table, which was enough to tell me that it was not for me. Face averted, I quickly moved on. The chocolate fanciers were handing out free Mars Bars and seemed quite friendly, so I signed up for that. Then I moved on to the rock-climbing club. A lone figure was sitting there, hair askew, reading a Gerald Durrell paperback. He looked up as I approached. ‘You English?’

  I wondered if it was a trick question. ‘No.’

  He leapt from behind the table, and grasped my hand. ‘Then please join us. We’re nearly up to quota and I’m trying to keep this club a Pom-free zone.’

  How could I resist?
It turned out that all Jonathan and I had in common was Anglophobia, but it held us together for the three years of my undergraduate degree. And when, just before it was time to graduate and go ‘home’, I got the letter from my mother telling me that she and my father were moving on to Laos and I realised I had no home, it was Jonathan who urged me to find a postgraduate course in Australia. ‘You can just nick over to South-East Asia any time from Oz,’ he said. ‘It’s like our backyard.’

  I don’t think either of us realised how much being on his home turf would change him. Or had being away from it changed him and he had reverted to his real self? I had somehow thought I wouldn’t be so foreign in Australia, but to Jonathan’s friends and family, to the people he introduced me to at parties, it was always: ‘This is my wife, Alix. She’s a Dutchy.’

  For some reason this Australian version of Jonathan found my Dutchness highly amusing. If we met his friends at a coffee shop he would turn it into a kind of party trick. ‘What’s the Dutch for “with cream” Alix?’ he’d ask, smirking in anticipation.

  ‘Met slagroom.’

  ‘What if we wanted to go to the lolly shop?’

  ‘Snoepwinkel.’

  Then his favourite. ‘I need to go to the hospital, Alix.’

  ‘Ziekenhuis.’ This would have him almost pissing himself. Even though I felt uncomfortable, it seemed churlish not to play along since Jonathan enjoyed it so much. I hope none of his friends ever needed to use the Dutch words. I only learned them piecemeal and second-hand from my parents, so they were probably hopelessly out of date.

  Because my father was determined we would all become fluent in English (the international language and, by extension, the language of God) the only Dutch words my parents used tended to be exclamations of shock, anger or elation, which I would instantly memorise. If a visitor came and used phrases of contemporary Dutch I would store them up and savour them. But not Abel. He regarded English as his ticket out, and I doubt if he would remember more than a few Dutch words.

  To the students and staff at my new university things were even more complicated. My application had been full of anomalies. My nationality was Dutch, but my place of residence was Manchester, and my permanent place of residence was Madagascar. When, during the graduation process, my parents moved to Luang Prabang (‘Where the fuck’s that?’ one frustrated clerk queried. ‘Sounds like Shangri La.’) I began to wonder where exactly, if anywhere, I did belong.

  Again, the only people who accepted me without question were the rock-climbers, and I think it was the climbing that kept Jonathan and me going and supplied me with most of my happiest memories of the eighteen months it took me to complete my graduate studies. We travelled all over Australia in our efforts to find the most difficult or most beautiful climbs. So when I told him I’d been offered a senior position at a fat salary, the fact that it was in Western Australia seemed unimportant.

  ‘What?’ And then a silence. ‘When did you apply for this?’

  I was taken by surprise at his reaction. He had quite recently finished his studies, and although he had a job in Melbourne, he talked endlessly about moving ‘onwards and upwards’. I had just assumed that he would come with me and make his upward move there. ‘You’ll get work straight away. There are plenty of jobs in Perth.’

  ‘I’ve never even been to Perth. I don’t have any contacts there.’

  There was another silence and I felt a sudden shift in the air as if something between us had suddenly disconnected.

  Then he looked at me. I still remember that look – hurt, sad, bemused, but not angry. ‘You’re going whatever I say, aren’t you?’

  I found it hard to look at his face. ‘It’s a great opportunity. I’ll be managing all the field work – Broome, the Kimberley, Norseman . . .’

  I wonder now what would have happened if I’d been more tentative, asked him how he felt. But I didn’t. I simply presented it as a fait accompli, and took it for granted that he would follow me there, as he would have taken it for granted I would follow him if the circumstances were reversed. What I didn’t take into account but now, with all the advantages of hindsight, I can see quite clearly, was that our career paths were beginning to diverge.

  I was in a rapidly expanding field where jobs were plentiful and well paid, and where there was a shortage of qualified geologists. For me, the time was ripe. You could go in with very little experience, prove your worth, and cut a swift path to a senior position, even as a recent graduate.

  For Jonathan, it was the opposite. The legal workforce moved slowly, along historically defined trajectories, and the path to senior levels was arduous and heavily tainted by nepotism. No wonder Jonathan was afraid of disrupting it.

  That evening, however, he arrived home with champagne and roses and cooked a celebratory dinner. I thought everything was going to be all right.

  I left for Western Australia about eight months after my journey to the Philippines. Jonathan didn’t follow me. I don’t think he’d even considered it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Coast Banksia (Banksia integrifolia)

  A large tree with dark-green leaves that are silver underneath. It is named after Sir Joseph Banks, who first collected samples in 1770. The distinctive pale-yellow flowerheads are made up of pairs of individual flowers and are followed by the woody grey cones made infamous for my generation by the wicked Banksia Men in May Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie books. The blossoms are an excellent source of nectar if soaked in water, but to avoid natural fermentation do not store the blossoms or allow plastic bags for gathering both nectar and dew to become heated by the sun.

  Atkinson’s Guide

  FIELD DIARY – Tuesday 17 April

  * * *

  Daybreak: Go outside for exercise and toilet. Explore beach.

  With my increasingly sparse liquid intake, the urgency of the daily toilet stops has diminished markedly, which I’m very much afraid is not a good sign. Once the necessities were over I returned to the cave and put on my jeans and boots, which is becoming quicker and easier as the jeans are becoming looser. Then, whistling recklessly, I finally took the rocky staircase down to the beach. It was still very early, and quite cool, but I was hoping there might be some way of having a wash in the sea. The constant dirtiness, which had been so familiar I didn’t even think about it, has become suddenly unbearable with a possible end in sight.

  It was only when I got to the beach that I finally began to feel a real sense of freedom. Even then, I was still careful to step on rocks whenever possible so I wouldn’t leave boot prints. Much of the sand on the little beach was covered in small pebbles and piles of plant debris, so it wasn’t too difficult to avoid leaving a trail. I told myself it was in case they came back and searched the area, but in reality it was more of a kind of obsession, a magical insurance. If I allow for the worst, it will prevent it from happening.

  I had built up great hopes for this little beach, so of course they were bound to be at least partially dashed. The karkalla was as abundant as I could have wished, and I picked an armful of long thick strands, to supply me not only with fruit but with rope as well. However, my hopes of washing in the sea were sadly disappointed. The sea was deep and clean-looking, but almost inaccessible. The beach, such as it was, was surrounded by a conglomeration of jagged rocks, slippery with seaweed, which I attempted to climb to see if there was any kind of diving platform. I soon realised that it was crazy to try this, particularly now when my prospects were just getting better – hardly the time to go seeking injury. So I gathered my spoils, and set off back up the steps, stopping about halfway up to make a thorough survey of the beach below.

  I’d been in such a hurry to get down there I hadn’t taken much notice of the lie of the land on my descent but now, viewed from above, I noted a possible launching place if the time ever came when I had to take to the water from this side of the island. I memorised it as best I could, took a good last look around, and then returned to the cave.

 
Since it was still very early, I decided to make a short trip to the coast banksia scrub, to see if I could obtain some nectar from the flowers. I found some blossoms in the remnants of shade that were still heavy with dew and tried squeezing the nectar into my hand, and then into my mouth. It turned out to have a gentle honeysuckle flavour, not at all overpowering, but sweetly delicious. I wondered if this was what the ambrosia of the gods tasted like.

  I managed to fill two small bags, tying them tightly and packing them into one of the remaining kitchen tidy bags. I knew I’d need to store this nectar carefully and keep it cool. I couldn’t risk it fermenting. Alcoholic abandon is the last thing I need in my situation.

  Again, by force of habit that was now superfluous if not downright superstitious, I brushed away my footprints on the return journey. Then I carefully stowed the nectar in the coolest and darkest corner of the cave until it was time to leave.

  6.00–8.00 a.m.: Housekeeping.

  I was slightly late with starting, but loading my backpack and clearing the cave took a surprisingly short time. I was determined to leave my shelter as close as possible to its original condition, and by the time I had finished, all that was left to do was to eat my breakfast, make my plan, and then sweep out all reminders of my presence.

  8.00–9.00 a.m.: First meal.

  It was just after nine o’clock when I sat down to my peanut and sultana feast. I skipped the usual morning drink and decided to strip the karkalla plants and put some of the fruit out in readiness for my midday snack. I packed the rope-like stems, which might yet prove useful.

  Then I moved to the entrance space and went over my plan yet again, somehow finding it hard to believe that it was safe to leave my hiding place, even though I was convinced that they had all left, and that now I had the island to myself.

  12.00–1.00 p.m.: Fruit snack.

  At midday, I got out my allowance of boobialla and karkalla fruits, but I felt sick and apprehensive and had to force myself to eat. Then I checked again that I had packed everything, that nothing was leaking, that everything was right with the world. For once the time seemed to race, and I felt my heart beating, not so much from fear of danger as from, ironically, fear of change. I have become used to my restricted life, and a part of me was reluctant to leave it.